...and I had any sense at all, I'd be demanding my money back after reading this column:
As far as I can tell, whenever we try to remember the past, we condemn ourselves to make new mistakes. Past events are like snowflakes: They are by their nature unique, as are the ways in which they interact.Pardon my french, but this is ever so much bullshit. Certain aspects of history have a commonality about them that needs to be noted so as not to be repeated. See Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, for starters. Could it seriously be argued that we don't have anything to learn from the rise and fall of those regimes that could help us avoid the mistakes they made -- the mistakes they WERE? I can't believe a professor of history could make such a fatuous observation, even if it's French history he teaches.
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